Would have been a chance for the kid with “that L.A. cool about him,” as his coach puts it, to live out one of his offseason passions — hit the beach and slip his feet into the sand for a few days.

Would have given Holiday an opportunity to sign some of the basketball cards that have been mailed to him the last few months, the ones that are otherwise sitting in his locker, until he has a chance to sign and return them.

Would have even given Holiday a chance to work on his rap game. (More on that later.)

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Instead, Holiday is in Houston preparing for his first appearance in the NBA All-Star Game. And that’s OK with Holiday — the selfless, down-to-Earth leader of the 76ers.

It’s not an uncommon sight for Holiday, as talented as he is, as young as he is, to hang around the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, the Sixers’ practice facility, long after some of his teammates have showered and already headed home. Nor is it rare that Holiday, following pregame shootarounds, to stick around in the Wells Fargo Center tunnel and sign autographs until every kid in line has shaken his hand or handed him a Sharpie.

“You never know whose day you’re going to make, or what’s going on in their life,” Holiday said recently, at his locker. “I’ve always followed what it says in the Bible. It says something like, ‘be humble or God will humble you.’

“With my parents, my family, we’ve always been pretty humble. We’re good at certain stuff, but I guess it’s really like everyone is human. Everyone is good at something. When I look at someone who isn’t a basketball player, maybe a fan, you might do something I can’t do and I think it’s amazing. When it comes to talking to people, everybody’s human. Everybody’s the same.”

Unless you’re talking about basketball, in which case, not everybody is like the 22-year-old Holiday. The fourth-year guard out of UCLA, in his first season as the Sixers’ primary ballhandler, is averaging 19.0 points and 8.9 assists. Until recently, before his assist total slipped out of the nines, no one in the league shared averages of that caliber.

Holiday’s been playing basketball since he was a child. It’s a game he was brought up on, naturally, as the son of Toya and Shawn, both of whom had college basketball careers.

Basketball is in Holiday’s blood. His older brother, Justin, was in Houston this weekend, participating in the D-League’s 3-point-shooting contest as a member of the Idaho Stampede. His younger sister, Lauren, is a freshman for the women’s team at UCLA. His younger brother, Aaron, is playing at Campbell Hall, where Holiday won a pair of California state titles for the private school set in Hollywood.

That familial love for the game didn’t keep Jrue from trying different things. He played varsity football as a freshman at Campbell Hall, where he eventually gave up the gridiron to focus on basketball and becoming the 2008 Gatorade national player of the year.

Holiday was a renaissance man, too, learning to get behind the drum kit and a piano.

“Throughout the years, you just pick up stuff from your parents,” Holiday said. “It was never forced with my family. It wasn’t like if you didn’t play basketball, you wouldn’t be a part of the family. It was like, ‘If you want to play basketball, cool,’ but you had other options. Me and my older brother are musically inclined. My little sister can sing and dance. My little brother is freakin’ phenomenal at baseball, football.

“We can do pretty much anything outside basketball and my parents would’ve been happy.”

And that includes rapping?

“That’s something new,” Jrue said, laughing.

Perhaps inspired by former teammate Lou Williams — “that guy could rap,” he said — Holiday said he has tried his hand at the rap game, even though he comes off as the shy guy, and the soft-spoken, low-toned point guard who minds his business.

“You go to that section of the house that echoes, like a bathroom or in the shower,” Holiday said, painting the picture of his makeshirt, in-home recording studio. “You put on the headphones and you’ve got your brother and your boy sitting outside, kind of hyping you like that’s the booth you’re in.

“It’s kind of weird, but that’s what I do.”

It’s not all Holiday does.

He scores, and he’s learning to do so almost at will. He improves the quality of his teammates’ play, one game at a time. He commands double-teams from opponents, and is finding ways to break them.

He’s winning games, too, even for the Sixers — saddled by injury, straggling in the Eastern Conference.

“He and I in a couple huddles, he said a couple things that I thought were so beneficial,” Sixers coach Doug Collins said, describing Holiday’s focus in a win this month over Charlotte.

“I talked to him about it. I thought a couple comments he made in the second quarter helped us win the game — just by him speaking. I thought that was a very positive thing, and I’m going to continue to encourage him to do that. With a few seconds to go in the game, I walked over to him and said, ‘You brought us home like an All-Star tonight. You made all the right plays.’”

Evan Turner, whose locker is attached to Holiday’s, put it this way: “Experience is like sharpening the knife,” Turner said. “(Holiday) is playing great right now and he’s only going to get better.”

While “All-Star” is a new distinction for Holiday, being called “fiance” has taken zero getting used to.

Holiday will marry longtime girlfriend Lauren Cheney, a soccer midfielder for the United States women’s national team, in July in a ceremony in California. So amid a personal ascension in respect and talent throughout the league, and attempting to lead a franchise revival with the Sixers, Holiday has had to do some wedding planning, even though he admits he’s left most of it to Cheney.

“She’s better at that stuff than me, for sure,” Holiday said.

With Cheney, wherever he goes, Holiday is prepared to be recognized. It’s why he keeps a stack of basketball cards in his car, in case a fan asks for an autograph.

That part, Holiday said, he still hasn’t gotten acclimated to.

“I can kind of blend in, at 6-4,” he said. “I try to do as best as I can when it comes to not being noticed. Some guys are (bad) when it comes to talking to people. I’m just a regular person. I just talk to people who want to talk to me. You never know who you’re going to meet.

“That’s life.”

And these days, living in Jrue Holiday’s shoes is just about as sweet as it gets.